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Shortbread

This is Marietjie's favourite shortbread recipe. It appeared in the South African Rooi Rose magazine a few years ago, when they featured a lady that passionately loved Scotland and all things Scottish.

Marietjie loves the love-heart cookie mold, but the Scottish thistle pattern is also quite popular with our Kiwi friends, perhaps due to Christchurch's Scottish heritage. The tartan used for the photo is that of the MacLeod clan.

Yields about 3 dozen

Ingredients

250 gram flour

125 gram cornflour

1 teaspoon (5 ml) salt

250 gram butter

125 gram castor or icing sugar

Method

Combine the dry ingredients.

The easiest is to cut the butter into small cubes and use a food processor to combine the butter and dry ingredients. If you prefer to use your hands: sift dry ingredients together, grate in chilled butter and work the butter into the dry ingredients.

Chill dough for at least half an hour.

You can form balls of dough and use a butter or cookie mold (shown in the photo) to shape the biscuits on the baking tray itself, and then use a cookie cutter to trim off the rough edges. Alternatively, roll the dough out to 3 mm thickness and cut with a cookie cutter.

Bake in an oven preheated to 160°C for about 10 to 15 minutes, until the colour of straw.

Let the biscuits cool down and cover with sifted icing sugar.

Store in an air-tight container.

Notes:

You can use any size cookie cutter, but keep in mind that larger biscuits will need to be baked longer.